Washington.- Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a reformulated indictment against Donald Trump, insisting on charges that he tried to alter the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election after losing to Joe Biden.
The new indictment maintains the same four crimes against the Republican as the previous one, but takes into account a recent Supreme Court ruling that grants a former president broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
The reworded indictment, which runs 36 pages instead of the previous 45, removes the parts that would be potentially affected by the ruling on presidential immunity by the high court, which is made up of a majority of conservative justices. It maintains the essentials and claims that Trump lost in 2020 but “was determined to stay in power” and tried to alter the results.
The court ruled in July that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts performed while in office, but can be prosecuted for unofficial acts.
This has put the prosecution of the former president in doubt. The accusation leaves in question whether special prosecutor Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and the former president’s lawyers will make public a schedule for pre-trial proceedings, as they were scheduled to do in three days. It is also not known whether Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, will hold a preliminary hearing on September 5. Trump’s defense has sought to delay the trial until after the November presidential election, in which the former tycoon is the Republican Party candidate against Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Trump is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States and obstructing an official proceeding: the session of Congress on January 6, 2021, which could not be held due to the violent intrusion of supporters of the former president. He is also accused of trying to disenfranchise American voters with a campaign of false claims that he won the 2020 election. The trial was initially scheduled for March 4 but was put on hold because his lawyers filed the presidential immunity suit with the Supreme Court. Chutkan, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, will decide which of Trump’s actions in the 2020 election were official acts and which were not. This and other preliminary issues are expected to take months, making it unlikely the case will go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.
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